


Supply and Demand

by Unsentimentalf



Series: Ideologies [2]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-10-23 10:27:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10717581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: Sequel to The Sound of Ideologies Clashing.The libertarian colony on Dera Three, settled two years ago on that planet, has something that Liberator needs. Fortunately for Del Tarrant and the rest of the crew their ideology means that they should be prepared to trade with anyone.





	1. Tea and Cabbages

“Dera Three, this is independent ship Liberator, currently in medium orbit. Please acknowledge our arrival and confirm clearance for a small trading party to come down to the surface.” 

Tarrant waited. “They’re slow,” Dayna commented after a few minutes. “Maybe we should try one of the other settlements.”

“The others are no more than collections of farmsteads.” Cally said. The screen showed a small town on the planet below them. Maybe two dozen buildings and at least three more under construction were laid out on a network of roads in the green countryside. A slow brown object creeping along one road had already been identified as a grav lifter carrying stone from the nearly quarry. “This is where Zen says the tech is concentrated.” 

“Dera Three, please confirm transmission,” Tarrant repeated.

“This is Dera Three to Liberator. Please confirm that Roj Blake is not on board.” The man’s voice was calm and not obviously unfriendly. 

“Blake? No. He disappeared some months ago.” 

“So we understand. Who are you and what is your connection to Blake?”

Tarrant frowned at Cally. These didn’t sound like routine questions. “My name’s Del Tarrant and I have no connection to Blake. Never met him. Why?”

There was another long pause, then another question. “What is the current ownership status of Liberator?”

Tarrant hit mute. “What do you think they’re after?” he asked the room. “Rebels, do you think?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Cally said. “Be careful, Tarrant.”

He spoke to the planet again. “I’m not sure why this is any of your business, but I found Liberator abandoned and salvaged her so legally that makes her mine.”

“Abandoned? So none of the original crew was on board?” 

Tarrant definitely didn’t like the tone of that last question. He decided to stick to technically truthful but highly misleading. “No. The current crew joined me later.” 

Another long pause, then “Thank you. You are welcome to come down to discuss your trading requirements, Del Tarrant.” 

“And thank you too,” he returned politely. “We’ll notify you when we’re ready. End transmission.”

“What do you think that was about?” Vila asked. 

Tarrant shrugged. “Anyone got any ideas? Liberator’s never been here before, has she?”

Cally shook her head. “Vila and I would remember. But someone down there definitely has strong feelings about Blake. I’ve no idea what feelings or why.”

“And you’ve as good as told them there are no original crew members on board,” Vila said, thoughtfully. “I think maybe you and Dayna should be the ones to go down to the surface, just in case they know our names and faces.”

“We could ask Avon,” Cally suggested.

“I did try to wake him up earlier long enough to explain what we were planning but he told me to just get the damn biologicals and went back to sleep.” Dayna said. 

“Well, that’s what we’re doing, “ Tarrant said. “I hope he’s going to be suitably grateful. We’ll go down armed, just in case, though we shouldn’t be able to get into too much trouble negotiating the purchase of a couple of dozen local cabbage equivalents. They are meant to be a peaceful trading settlement, after all.”

 

“Are you sure these are the co-ordinates?”

“Spot on,” Vila said from the ship.

“Right.” Tarrant turned around again, slowly. It wasn’t what he’d expected. They appeared to be standing in someone’s oversized living room. A fire burned on the hearth, deep and comfortable armchairs were arrayed around a coffee table holding a tray of cups and assorted pots with steam rising from them. Woven and skin rugs were spread across the glossy wooden floor and the dark panelled walls were hung with modern paintings, antique tapestries, carefully mounted weapons and a couple of heads of annoyed looking wild animals. A dark wood desk held papers, a modern looking console and a platinum framed photo of a baby. There was nobody else here. 

“Oh!” Dayna had apparently seen a gun she liked. 

“Don’t touch it!” Tarrant warned.

“I wasn’t going to. But have you seen the barrel on this?”

Tarrant would normally have been quite happy to take a look at an unusual barrel, but right now he was more interested in why they were standing in a room that looked remarkably like one of several in his family home. He had been raised with money, and he knew what money bought. Whoever lived here had the resources to live somewhere a great deal more comfortable than a frontier world with a couple of thousand people and an imported mid tech economy. 

The door opened and a woman walked in. She was only a couple of years older than Tarrant but she reminded him of his favourite aunt. She smiled and her hands came forward in a gesture of welcome, nowhere near the gun at her side.

“My name is Uva Geraint. Welcome in peace to Dera Three and my home.”

“Thank you,” Tarrant gave her a warm smile back. “I’m Del Tarrant and this is Dayna Mellanby.” 

She nodded. “Your name was flagged up by our computer system, Tarrant. Records indicate that you have engaged in piratical activity in the past.” 

“I bet they do,” Tarrant said cheerfully. “But I’m here to trade. Do you have a moral objection to trading with ex-pirates?”

“We don’t have a moral objection to trading with anyone.” She gestured to the seats. “Shall we? It does raise a practical concern however, which hopefully we can swiftly resolve. Tea?”

Tarrant settled into a chair and gave the proffered cup a sniff, then a sip, then gave a long sigh of pleasure. It was tea too, Earth tea. Leaves grown nowhere else tasted quite like that. The last time he’d had a cup of real tea had been his last visit home, just a few weeks before he’d absconded. Surely Geraint couldn’t have found out enough about him to know that he’d recognise the taste? It must just be generous hospitality. 

Dayna declined politely. Probably wiser if both of them didn’t risk get poisoned, Tarrant thought. Besides, there would be at least one more cup in the pot for him that way. 

“So, your practical concern,” he said, once he’d been appropriately flattering about the tea. “How can we help?”

“You have a near instantaneous teleport device, and a history of absconding with other people’s possessions,” Uva said without any indication that she was intending to be insulting. “That poses rather more risk to our assets that we are prepared to take. I would like you to take off the teleport bracelets.” 

Tarrant sighed inwardly. After everything had been going so well, and how did she even know that the bracelets controlled the teleport? He leaned forward, ready to get up from his chair. “Sorry, we’re not going to hand them over. I assure you that they would be no use to you if we did.”

Geraint looked startled for a second. “They belong to you. I would no more deprive you of them than I would insist on you disarming. I was proposing merely that you remove them from your wrists for the duration,. You might consider it the equivalent of keeping your gun holstered.”

Tarrant wasn’t sure that being poised to escape quickly was the equivalent of being ready to shoot someone at all. And what did they think he was likely to grab and run off with before they had time to shoot him? Admittedly there were plenty of items in this room that would sell for many thousand credits, but Uva hadn’t seem particularly concerned about the security of her furnishings when she had directed them to teleport down here. 

On the other hand he and Dayna both had their guns, putting the bracelets back on would take a matter of seconds, and he feared that Avon needed the biologicals as a matter of urgency. Compliance seemed the best course. Tarrant spoke briefly to the ship, telling them what he was about to do, then slid his bracelet off and pushed it into the inside pocket of his jacket, nodding to Dayna to do the same. If Liberator needed to communicate the bracelet would now emit an alarm loud enough to get his attention instead of the usual quiet vibrate. Then he poured out the last of the tea for himself and Uva. 

“This reminds me too much of what I’ve been missing. I must get hold of some tea leaves and teach our dispenser how to make proper tea.”

Uva laughed. “Don’t waste tea leaves on that thing. I never managed to get it to produce anything drinkable, with the one exception of a peculiar bitter lemon drink that Zen insisted was yellow coffee.” 

Tarrant just about managed not to spill his tea as Dayna demanded “You’ve been on the Liberator?” 

“Under its previous ownership, of course.” Uva didn’t seem to think the matter was remarkable. 

“Of course,” Dayna said with what appeared to be equal unconcern. “Well, the drinks dispenser is still awful. Maybe you should do something about this, Del, now it’s your ship.”

Tarrant didn’t need the reminder to stick to their story but he was glad that Dayna was thinking fast. Now all he had to do was work out how much natural curiosity he should reasonably show about Liberator’s previous activities. 

“Roj Blake certainly managed to cover a lot of ground,” he said cheerfully. “We’ve been most of the way round the galaxy in the last three months and Liberator’s previous ownership always seems to have been there before us.”

“Do you think he’s dead?” Uva asked.

“I imagine so. He certainly hasn’t caught up with me to ask for his ship back.” 

“But then catching up with Liberator isn’t easy, “ Dayna commented. “We’re a bit fast.” 

“I remember, “ Uva said. “And what are you doing now you have the fastest ship in the galaxy, Del Tarrant?”

“This and that,” he said. “Having fun. Seeing the universe. Getting into trouble and then getting out of it again, mainly.” 

“Piratical sort of trouble?” Geraint asked, pointedly.

“Not any more, “ Tarrant said, managing to conveniently forget about Kairos. “As you perceptively observed, the combination of teleport and a very fast ship makes stealing things far too easy to be a worthwhile challenge, and we have more than adequate resources.” 

“But you would still like something from Dera Three?”

“We would like to trade with you, yes.” Tarrant put down his empty cup. “For silver leaf rhubarb.”

Uva nodded without surprise. It was the only valuable commodity unique to Dera Three. “That will be expensive. Our botanists have been unable to culture them and our geneticists haven’t yet isolated all the genes for the production of exigene so they still have to be found and picked in the wild.” She walked over to her console and tapped for a few seconds. “Sixteen people currently have supplies on offer. I’ll transfer over their contact details.”

“Sixteen?” Tarrant said in some dismay. “I don’t have time to negotiate with sixteen people. Don’t you operate any sort of broker service?”

“We can do, of course. Did you have anyone in mind to act as broker?” 

Tarrant gave her his most winning smile. “Perhaps you could do it, if you had the time, of course?”

“My time and expertise is available, for a fee,” Uva said. “You ought to be aware that I will also receive a percentage of the sale price from any traders that you deal with as a result of my introduction.” 

“That’s not much incentive to keep the price low.” Tarrant agreed. “Well, I’m grateful for your scrupulous disclosure but I still don’t want to deal with sixteen people. We want the best deal on enough rhubarb to provide three hundred micrograms of exigine, processed or unprocessed. What would you charge as a brokerage fee?”

Uva titled her head, calculating. “My fee would be eight percent. At recent prices that would work out at somewhere between four and six thousand credits for unprocessed leaves.”

“That’s a lot of money for something you just pick from the wild,” Dayna sounded startled. 

“A universal anti-toxin is worth what people are prepared to pay for it.” Uva said. “We operate a fully free market, obviously.”

“But with a monopoly on this planet, don’t you have an incentive to keep supplies low, to keep the price up?” Tarrant suggested.

Uva looked slightly displeased, for the first time. “Anyone can go out there and pick rhubarb leaves then sell them. The customers have the freedom to buy or not to buy. What arrangements traders make between themselves regarding stock levels are entirely their business.”

“So there is a cartel?” Tarrant pushed, curious.

“A cartel is just a socialist word for sellers’ freedom to make what arrangements they wish. We have that freedom on this planet, yes of course.” 

Tarrant had been doing his own sums, and was beginning to understand how Geraint could afford to offer Earth tea to passing strangers. “How much will you get from the traders, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Seven percent.” 

Fiftteen percent total of somewhere around fifty thousand credits for a deal that would probably take a couple of hours tops. No wonder this room looked like Tarrant’s old home. Uva must be ridiculously wealthy. 

Tarrant thought about Avon, flickering in and out of sleep in the med unit. The money didn’t matter one jot- Liberator had plenty. “It’s a deal. If you copy me that list I might have a chat with a few of the traders myself. Consider it due diligence.” He cared not at all about getting the best price for a bunch of alien cabbages but he felt that it was probably better to make Geraint think he did. 

 

“Well? How did it go?” Cally asked.

“Fine,” Tarrant said with confidence. “Nice planet, nice people. They’re sorting out the deal now.” 

Dayna aimed a scowl at him. “You liked her?”

“Why shouldn’t I like her? She was very hospitable and certainly well organised. Didn’t you think so?”

“I liked her guns.” Dayna said. “That’s as far as I’ll go.” And to Cally and Vila. “She said that she’d been on Liberator, Uva Geraint. Ring any bells?”

They shook their heads. “Zen,” Vila asked. “Has someone called Uva Geraint ever been on Liberator?”

**Confirmed.**

There was a flicker of surprise around the group. “When, exactly?” Cally asked.

Zen was incapable of telling a story in a way that made sense to his human listeners, but they finally managed to get the bare bones of what had happened, if not why. Five hundred and eighteen colonists including Uva Geraint had been rescued from a natural disaster on Ida Six a little over two years ago. Five days later five hundred and fifteen people had disembarked on Dera Three. In the interim three of the colonists had died. Blake and Avon had been on board at the time but no other crew members. 

Some digging around in the logs at the time sparked Vila’s memory at last. “Oh! That was the one time we actually got to stay on a pleasure planet. You must remember, Cally? Blake and Avon took Liberator off for a rebel message drop.”

“And came back furious,” Cally agreed. “With each other, with whatever had happened out there- I don’t know which, but they were both seething and they didn’t calm down for weeks.”

“And now Uva Geraint doesn’t want Blake anywhere near her planet.” Tarrant said. “I wonder what she thinks of Avon.” 

“We ought to wake him up,” Cally said.

“Don’t do that!” Tarrant said. “She doesn’t know he’s here. For that matter he doesn’t know he’s here either. We’re only an hour or so off getting what the med unit needs to cure him. Everything’s going smoothly enough; let’s keep anyone who might hold old grudges safely ignorant of each other’s presence.”

“I don’t know why she’d hold a grudge about being rescued,” Vila muttered. 

“Three people died,” Dayna reminded him. “Maybe from injuries they received on Ida Six, or maybe not. I wish Zen could tell us anything at all about human motivations. We can’t know anything from numbers,”

“Orac was there. It might be able to help.” Vila suggested. “If we could get it working.”

“Until we fix Avon, Avon can’t fix Orac.” Tarrant said. “We need to get these gold plated cabbages. Everything else is irrelevant. So don’t wake Avon, not now.”


	2. Personal Freedoms

Down on the planet there was more tea waiting, and a small packet by his cup. Tarrant sniffed at it and smiled. “I am hugely grateful. Can I reimburse you for the cost?”

“It’s a gift. Just don’t feed it into that infernal machine,” Uva said. “My report is here; the total cost for my recommended deal will be sixty four thousand, five hundred and nine credits.” 

Tarrant nodded. “I’ll read it through now, if that’s all right.”

“Please do.” Uva transferred it to his handheld console and poured a fresh cup of tea. The report was dry reading and not much use to Tarrant without any knowledge of the relevant markets but it looked professional enough, and they needed the rhubarb leaves. 

More for the sake of having showing that he’d read it than with any real curiosity he asked “What’s DSCP?” All the sellers seemed to have the initials after their name.

“Deran Supply Chain Partnership,” Uva said. “They handle on-planet sourcing for their members.”

“And are you getting a cut from them as well?” Tarrant said, not entirely seriously.

“I’m not a member any more,” Uva said with a frown. “There were ethical differences.” 

Tarrant had a bizarre mental image of a Deran maltreating a cabbage, but he didn’t pass it on. Some people had very weird religious views. “Not unethical enough to be left out of your report, I’m glad to see?”

The frown deepened. “I was under the distinct impression that someone on that ship of yours is rather urgently in need of exigene. If I were to refuse to deal with anyone who has failed to live up at all times to this colony’s founding principles then you might as well go out there and start hunting under trees yourselves.”

“Fair enough,” Tarrant conceded. “I was just curious.”

“Were you curious enough to ask your ship about my visit?”

“Yes I was,” Tarrant said,. “It said that you came here as refugees after a natural disaster on your home planet.”

“An asteroid strike on Ida Six, yes. Most of our people were killed. The small number who ended up here have been through a great deal. People’s response to these stresses have not always been along the lines that I would wish, but in a society defined by personal freedoms people must have the freedom to make mistakes.”

Tarrant wasn’t sure that he’d ever heard a philosophy that suited him better. He’d made a few mistakes in his time, and he didn’t like other people telling him what to do. He did wonder why someone with such a pleasantly laissez faire attitude should have fallen out with Blake and Avon, but Avon could be quite annoying and from everything he’d heard, Blake could match the man for that.

He put the report down. “That’s entirely acceptable, thank you. Where will we pick up the goods?”

“In the traders’ hall. This way.” 

Outside it was raining. Uva led him swiftly down the street and out of the wet into a large hall with rather fine marble pillars. Inside there was an open space with tables around the sides and maybe a dozen people sorting out commodities on them. The walls were hung with paintings, most of them heroic in theme, but a huge framed picture of a dark sky over a battlefield opposite the entrance caught Tarrant’s eye, as it was clearly intended to. He walked over to take a closer look. 

It seemed to be a photograph, not a painting. In the foreground a young man lay in the muddy grass, open eyes staring up at the rain, a gun still clasped in one outspread hand. Behind him were other bodies, bundles of clothing, parts of machinery, weapons, all strewn without any order across the soaking wet grass. There were dead children as well, Tarrant saw, with discomfort. Uva had come up to stand beside him. 

“I took that image,” she said.

“You did?” Tarrant stared at it some more. Maybe it wasn’t a battlefield; maybe it was some sort of natural disaster. “The asteroid strike?” 

“Not Ida Six, no. It was taken only about three miles from here.”

“Here? But all the dead bodies? Who are they?”

“They aren’t dead, they are unconscious. That’s how we arrived on this planet, Del Tarrant. Every single thing we managed to save from our destroyed homes and businesses, every scrap of clothing, every gene store, every piece of machinery, every family keepsake, every weapon to defend ourselves, all dumped in the mud and the rain along with our unconscious bodies and abandoned.” She reached up to run a finger along the plain silver frame. “I thought there should be a record, in case my people ever forgot how they came here.”

“It’s a remarkable photograph,” Tarrant said, truthfully. He was now absolutely certain that he really didn’t want to know what had happened on Liberator after all, at least not until this trade was done and he was safely home with the leaves that would save Avon’s life. “Are we keeping our seller waiting?”

“She’s not here yet. “ Uva was still looking up at the picture. “How much do you know about Roj Blake?”

Tarrant shook his head. “Nothing much. He was the Freedom Party leader, back on Earth; he was meant to be exiled to a prison planet but he took Liberator somehow and caused all kinds of trouble for the Feds before disappearing in the alien invasion. That’s about it.”

“And do you know what the Freedom Party stood for?”

He shrugged. “Freedom, I suppose? I’m not much interested in that sort of thing, I’m afraid.”

She smiled a little at that. “ You don’t feel you have any political allegiances?”

“Well, the Feds will no doubt shoot me for desertion if they catch up with me, so I guess I’m on the side of the other guys, whoever they are. But I’m not political, no.”

“Kerr Avon claimed not to be, either,” Uva said. 

Tarrant really didn’t want to talk about Avon. “You’ve come a long way from this in just two years.” He gestured to the photo. “Dera Three seems to be working out for your people now.”

“We are survivors,” Uva said. “Personal freedom, self-reliance, payment of debts and defence of what is ours; a colony based on those principles will thrive in the most adverse of circumstances. Your seller has just arrived.”

Tarrant was introduced to an older woman called Davine Herevant, who unlocked a box. Inside, Tarrant was glad to see, were leaves. A set of scales was produced and verified, then four leaves carefully placed on top of it. Not much for sixty four thousand credits, Tarrant thought, but it was what he’d come for. 

“Thank you.” He seemed to be saying that a great deal on this planet. Maybe it was a reminder of the manners he had supposedly been brought up with. “Where shall I transfer the ...” 

He saw Uva’s head jerk as her console alarm went. His instincts, on edge since he’d seen that photo, reacted to her shock as she looked at it. By the time she’d drawn her gun he was behind an overturned table and pushing the bracelet back on his wrist. There was an explosion, close enough to him for a flash of pain across his face, and a tumult of voices that the teleport whisked him away from. 

 

"Another message from Geraint. Hand over Avon or face the consequences " Vila said. 

Tarrant eased the cold towel off from his slightly blistered face. No chance of the med unit till Avon was out of it. "What are they gong to do, point a comms satellite at us? Ignore her." 

“And more offers from six - no seven sellers now.” Cally said. “The price is down to forty thousand credits and they are all offering full personal protection from attack for all Liberator personnel. Latest guy says he’ll undercut any other offer by four percent.” 

“Not exactly full of community solidarity, are they?” Tarrant muttered.

“At least that’s what they want us to think.” Dayna seemed grimly satisfied by the accuracy of her assessment of Geraint. “You can’t trust them, Tarrant.”

“We shouldn’t need to trust them. The rhubarb is supposed to grow across the whole of the temperate zone in this planet, and it might be a very small planet but that's still several hundred miles around. Find me some of those farm settlements, as far from the Idans as possible. It’s a free market, they tell us, so we’ll take our custom elsewhere.” 

 

The farmer had a genuine pitchfork in his hand and while he wasn’t exactly waving it he wasn’t putting it down either. “What do you want?”

“We’re friendly. We’re from off world and we only want to trade with you,” Tarrant said. 

“Got nothing to trade. Go away and leave us in peace.” His accent was very different from that of the townsfolk. 

“All right.” Tarrant backed off a little. “We just wanted to know if anyone around here might have silver leaf rhubarb for sale. We can pay well.” 

“Ask the bloody Idans,” the man snarled. “They came by two weeks ago. You’ll find none here any more.”

“You sell it to them?” Damn. 

“Yes, we sell it to them.” The man spat on the floor. “Two full grown plants I had this year.”

The state of the dilapidated wooden farmstead and the patched fencing didn’t suggest a hundred thousand credit windfall. “You don’t know anyone who might have held a few leaves back?”

The man spat again. “No-one since Feg did that, and he’s dead, isn’t he? You’ll get nothing here. ”

Tarrant got no more from the next place he tried, but at the third an elderly man came out who seemed willing at least to talk. No, there were no leaves. The DSCP always took them all. 

“You don’t have to sell to them, do you?” Tarrant asked.

“There’s a free market, they tell us. Supply and demand. We are told we can sell to anyone, of course.” He sighed. “But they took our comms equipment and now offworlders deal with them alone. Our farms need the money they are offering. We cant afford to turn them down and we can’t afford to antagonise them either. You won’t find a single leaf anywhere but with the Idans or in the wild.”

“Why did they take your equipment?” Dayna demanded.

The man paused, considering them, “My name’s Keir,” he said. “Come inside and I’ll tell you. Someone ought to know what’s been happening on this planet since the Idans arrived.” 

Tarrant put a hand on Dayna’s arm when she started to follow. “We’re meant to be finding cabbages to cure Avon,” he reminded her. “Not socialising. If there aren’t any here we should go back to the ship and decide what to do next.”

“You just don’t want to think about what your rich friends might have been up to.” Dayna told him. “I do. I want to know why they took that comms equipment. Go back to the ship if you like but I’m staying to find out.” 

Tarrant sighed and followed her in. 

The tea wasn’t a patch on Uva’s but this time Dayna seemed happy to have a cup. The inside of the farmhouse was simple but homely, with carvings of plants and animals on the chairs and tables and thick woollen cushions and blankets. A loom was set up in the window with a complex patterned fabric, half complete. A few bits of elderly tech were in evidence in the kitchen but there was no sign of a viewscreen in the main room. 

Over the bitter tea Keir explained that the Idans had been welcome at first. They were civil and they insisted on paying for all the help and supplies the Derans had provided to assist them in settling in. But then the matter of the rhubarb had come up.

Keir had been the senior member of the colony’s three person elected authority who made community decisions and settled disputes. The scattered farmsteads were primarily independent but a small amount of money every year went towards central food storage to see them through poor years, an emergency fund for crises and the wages of a couple of biologists working on crop improvement and the analysis of indigenous animals and plants. These biologists had started to unravel the unique properties of the silver leaf rhubarb a short time before the Idans arrived and Keir and his colleagues had been hopeful that they could work in partnership with the more sophisticated Idan equipment and specialists to develop the resource. 

“But it didn’t work like that.” Dayna guessed.

“They’d seemed happy to rub along with our society at first but when they found out how valuable the rhubarb was their whole attitude changed. They told us that they considered a “communist society” on the same planet as them was a direct threat to their existence, that our farms were now part of the free market and that any attempt to reimpose either elections or taxation would be met with deadly force. All our collectively owned assets were seized and dismantled or sold and the proceeds returned to us, which meant the loss of all our tech infrastructure. It turns out that any attempt by Derans to organise and defend each other now counts as communism and since they brought a great deal more weaponry with them than we ever had, we sell them the damn rhubarb at the prices they set and keep our heads down.” 

Tarrant remembered Uva telling him about their philosophy of personal freedom and self reliance and he felt sickened. 

“We could take on the Idans,” Dayna said. “They've got no protection from an orbital attack.”

"Hang on. Wait a minute!" Tarrant wasn't feeling anything like that emotional. He turned to Keir . "I'm really sorry that your new neighbours are bastards but we're just one ship with five crew and one of those five is slowly dying from a poison we can't cure. We haven't got the time or the manpower to start a war in order to sort out social problems we had no hand in making- we need to be searching for silver leaf."

He stood up, placing his cup down. "Thank you for your hospitality. If we think of any way we can help without taking time we can't afford or getting into a conflict with the Idans I'll be sure to let you know. I'll leave you a communicator so you can get in touch if someone finds some rhubarb."

 

“It's not our business!” Tarrant said for the tenth time. “We haven't even any proof that the Idans are oppressive. All the farmers said that they got paid, didn't they?” 

“Even after they tried to kill you, you still favour the rich guys,” Dayna said. 

“I'm not favouring anyone. I'm trying to save Avon's life. You're getting distracted from that. I'm sure the Idans haven't behaved perfectly, but they didn't exactly get a good start on this planet, did they? Dumped unconscious in the mud? That's enough to make anyone a bit overprotective about threats to their colony.”

“So it is our business,” Cally said. “Liberator brought them here. Blake and Avon seem to have antagonised them,. Without this ship the Derans would still be alone on their planet and presumably they would be the ones profiting from its natural resources. I don't see how we can just wash our hands of this, Tarrant.”

“Right. I’m going to wake up Avon.” Tarrant looked around at the doubtful faces. “He's the one who apparently screwed this planet up. And if we're going to war with the only people who have what we need to save his life I think he ought at least to be consulted, don't you? 

At first Avon couldn't be woken. It was a couple of minutes after the med unit had been instructed to lower the painkillers that he opened his eyes and saw the rest of the crew around the bed . 

“This doesn't look good,” he said on a sigh. Tarrant had been thinking the same. Avon was lying flat in his back,in a long gown, tubes from the need unit going in and out under it in half a dozen places. His blood was being constantly filtered but the unit wasn't quite able to keep up with the toxins that had saturated his fat cells and were now leaking back into his blood and building up in his liver and kidneys. Two to three more days, Zen predicted until the organ damage became irreparable. 

“We have an issue with the anti toxin,” Tarrant said. “Several issues in fact. The only place we've been able to source it is a planet called Dera Three. We're in orbit around there now.”

“Dera Three.” Avon said faintly. “Oh hell. Not the libertarians?”

“The same. We had a deal set up for the biologicals but at the last minute our contact somehow found out that you were on board and now she's shooting at us instead. We've tried the other settlements but it seems that the libertarians invariably buy up all the plants, possibly using coercion.” 

“No ‘possibly’ about it,” Dayna interrupted. “The rhubarb is worth a fortune and the farmers get a pittance. Their government has been dismantled by force by your libertarians, Avon, their tech equipment confiscated and their scientific work stolen. Now the Idans just sit back and get rich from the plants they force the farmers to sell them.” 

“None of which relates to Avon's immediate problem.” Tarrant said. “We have several offers of the plant for sale from various Idans but we don't know if they are genuine attempts to cash in on the situation or a feint to get us back into Geraint's clutches. It might help if we knew whether her grudge against you is likely to be shared by her compatriots. In other words, what the hell did you and Blake do?”

Avon hat closed his eyes while Tarrant was talking. Now he lay so still that Tarrant thought he must have fallen asleep or passed out. Eventually , however he shifted slightly again. 

“Why did the Idans move against the local government,” he asked Dayna. 

“That's not relevant to anything.” Tarrant insisted. 

“Shut up Tarrant. Well?” 

“To profit from the rhubarb! Isn't that obvious?” 

Avon sighed, sounding genuinely weary "Why did they _say_ that they did it?" 

"Oh! They said a communist government was a threat to them. The Derans weren't communists though. They were a perfectly ordinary group of settlers and the Idans moved in and..."

“Please be quiet, Dayna,” Avon said his eyes briefly closing again. "This headache... Was Geraint part of the coup?”

“Of course she was,” Dayna said disgustedly. “She didn’t get that rich trading honestly.”

“I don’t think so,” Tarrant corrected her. “She told me that she’d pulled out of the suppliers’ organisation on ethical grounds.”

Avon’s lips twitched at that. “Still the idealist. She won’t lie to you, unlike the others. Ask her what her price for keeping me alive is and pay it."

“Negotiating advice is not really what I woke you for. We need to know what you did, Avon.” Tarrant said.

“I listened to Blake. Always thought that would kill me some day.” He sounded as if the conversation had already exhausted him.

“So what did Blake do?” Dayna demanded.

“He interfered, of course. Just like you want to do. Talk to Uva, Tarrant. Tell her I’m sorry, if you like. Can’t do any harm. ”

“And what about the farmers?” Dayna insisted.

Avon closed his eyes. “Uva,” he said again, weakly, and fell asleep.


	3. Combatants and Non Combatants

“Decision time. How do we get the lettuces? Trade with the Idans, threaten them or steal from them?” Tarrant had led the way back to to flight deck, feeling it somewhat unseemly to argue the matter over Avon’s comatose body. 

“Give them a taste of their own medicine,” Dayna snarled. “Let them see what’s is like to be forced to trade at gunpoint.”

Cally settled at the communications console, glancing at the new messages. “They are already falling over themselves to trade with us, We don’t need to threaten them.”

“Avon said that we shouldn’t trust them,” Tarrant said. 

Vila poured himself a drink. “Avon doesn’t trust anyone.”

“He trusts Geraint, apparently,” Tarrant had been a little surprised at that.

“Avon only said that she wouldn’t lie to you. He didn’t say that she’d trade with you, or even that she wouldn’t blow your head off at the first opportunity.” Vila pointed out.

“Still, he knows these people from before. I think we should trust his judgement.” Tarrant felt rather awkward to be the one saying that, but then of course Avon couldn’t hear him so it didn’t really count.

Cally looked surprised. “Really? He and Blake managed to mortally offend them. That doesn’t suggest reliable judgement to me.”

“Still, talking to Geraint again gets my vote. If that doesn’t work out we can try something else.”

“That’s just stupid,” Dayna said. “She tried to kill you and she wants Avon dead. We can’t trust any of them. I vote that we give them a demonstration of Liberator’s weapons by redecorating that awful woman’s living room from orbit, then insist that they give us what we need.”

Cally frowned at Tarrant. “It does seem absurd to go back to the only person down there that we know for certain is hostile to Liberator and from what you say she doesn’t have what we need anyway. I think that we should make a suitably cautious approach to some of these traders and see if our problem can be solved without any more trouble.“

“That’s three votes for three different actions,” Tarrant said. “If Vila wants to sneak down to the surface and steal the rhubarb we’ll have a complete deadlock.”

“Stealing things is easy- it’s the dodging crazed people with guns while I do it that’s the tricky bit,” Vila said. “I agree with Cally- give them the money, pick up the goods, cure Avon and move on to somewhere where people don’t hate us for no apparent reason.”

“That’s decided then,” Cally said. “We trade.”

 

Tarrant drifted between the empty consoles on the silent flight deck. After substantial negotiations over the communicator Cally and Dayna were down on the planet, armed to the teeth (Cally discreetly, Dayna not so much). Vila was monitoring the teleport. Avon was deep under sedation. Even Liberator herself was silent, steady without the need for the slightest engine thrust in an orbit around the planet below. Tarrant couldn’t remember a moment on board so apparently peaceful. It made him itch to do something.

“Zen, open communications to Uva Geraint.”

_Confirmed_

The first thing that happened, even before the video feed came thorough, was an unexpectedly high voice from the speakers. “Auntie? Is that you? "

The screen brightened to show a child, no more than twelve years or so, standing in Geraint's living room. Wide dark eyes stared at Tarrant. "Who are you? "

Tarrant smiled at her. “Hello. My name’s Del. What’s yours?

“Ceres,” she said hesitantly.

“Hello Ceres, Can I speak to Uva please?”

“She’s busy.” The girl looked extremely nervous. “Doing business...stuff.” 

“OK,” Tarrant said, still smiling. “But you see, she's been calling my ship and it sounded very urgent, so I think that you should let her know that I’m here.”

“Oh. You’re them!” Ceres didn’t look any less scared. “I can’t. She’s not here. I think you should go away now.”

From the fact that she’d made no attempt to look round or find assistance Tarrant guessed that she was on her own. “Is something wrong, Ceres? Maybe I can help?”

“Not you! I don't want Lib'rator to take all the children away!” Her voice now held a touch of a panicked wail. 

That puzzled him. “Take you away? From Dera Three?”

“Just...take us away,” she repeated. “All the children."

“Is that what you’re frightened of?”

She gave him what was probably supposed to be a defiant look. “Don’t be silly. The grown ups won’t let you take us. They have lots of guns.” The thought didn’t seem to be much of a comfort to her- he could see tears in her eyes now and her hands were entwined and shaking in her lap. Whatever the problem down there was, he thought with a twinge of guilt that it was unlikely that Liberator had had nothing to do with it.

“Look, Ceres. I’m going to come down and make sure you’re all right. I promise I’m not going to take you away. No-one is.”

“You can’t come in,” she said. “Auntie Uva has locked all the doors and put the shutters up.”

“Don't work about that. I'll see you in a couple of minutes.”

 

“Down and safe.”

“Five minutes.” Vila’s worried voice came from his bracelet. “You promised, Tarrant.”

“Don’t worry.” He took a look around the room. It was darker than on his previous visits, the delicate glass in the windows now covered by thick steel shutters. The girl was curled up on the sofa, arms round her knees and a look of astonishment on her face.

“It’s just a teleport,” he told her. “One of the things our ship can do.” She was smaller and maybe a year or so younger than he'd thought and still very distressed. He could see the tear streaks on her face. Tarrant walked around looking for something to reassure her and picked on the photo of the baby. “So who is this fine fellow?” 

“Baer. He's my cousin.”

“And where is Baer right now?”

She glanced towards the door to the corridor. “He’s asleep.” And with a touch of pride through the tears. “I'm looking after him. You won't wake him up, will you? Sometimes he cries really loud.”

“Certainly not," he reassured her. Sleeping babies were definitely his favourite sort. “Do you live here with Baer and your aunt?”

She seemed slightly confused that he would have to ask. A very small colony, he reminded himself. The notion of strangers might not come naturally. “I live next door with Papa. Auntie Uva said her house had a fensible primeter, so I should babysit here.”

Tarrant wondered if Ceres knew what a defensible perimeter was. He hoped not. What on earth was going on here? Uva and this Papa had left two children alone in a fortified and locked down house, knowing perfectly well that anyone from Liberator could teleport straight in. So where were they? He thought about asking about the girl’s mother but just in time remembered the death count from the asteroid on Ida. There might be a lot of small families.

He tapped his bracelet. “Vila, can you check if there's any weapons discharge going on on the planet?

“No, I can’t.” Vila replied with a touch of sullenness.” I’m on teleport duty, remember. Because there's no-one else up here. Are you coming back now?”

“It's important, Vila. Use Orac if you need to.”

There was another grumble but Vila at least sounded as if he was making a move to comply. Tarrant turned back to Ceres.

“When did the grown ups say they'd be back?”

“I don't know.” A renewed sob. “Auntie said that when the bell rang I was to press this button. ” She showed him a hand console and made no objection to him taking it. Apparently even potentially child-stealing alien grown ups were better than managing alone.

The alarm was set for about two hours time. Tarrant recognised the public access code at a glance; the console was programmed to call Liberator. A couple of minutes’ work and he had extracted the file for the pre-recorded message and converted it to text. He didn't want listening to whatever it contained to frighten the girl more than she was already.

It was a fortunate precaution to have taken.

_Kerr Avon. Your friends should never have brought you back here. They can have no idea of the damage Blake caused to this community. You were complicit in his actions and my obligation is clear, if unpalatable. If you receive this I have failed in my resolution to bring about your death and I and my allies are probably dead as a consequence._

_There are two children in my home and in danger from my enemies, my niece and my son. Blake's philosophy would have obliged him, against all reason, to take responsibility for their safety though I am certain that he would have totally disregarded their parents' wishes. If the same ethics compel you or your shipmates I can ask only as a favour that you find them a home elsewhere, with decent people who abhor hypocrisy, rather than hand them back to those who were once my people._

_If you live and I don't, my advice to you is to stay away from Blake and everything he stood for. You would have been a better person without him. ___

__The message ended without any farewell._ _

__Tarrant looked across at Ceres. “Your aunt is a very strange woman,” he said. “I’m afraid that we may have to wake the baby after all.”_ _

__

__“THIS IS CERES!” Tarrant shouted, over howls. “AND THIS IS BAER. HE DOESN’T LIKE THE TELEPORT! THIS NICE MAN IS VILA.”_ _

__He handed the furious baby over to its cousin. “TRY HIM WITH THE FLASHING LIGHTS OVER THERE” he yelled. The volume went down a fraction as the baby was carried a few yards away._ _

__“Who are they?” Vila demanded. “Why are they here?”_ _

__“It’s not safe down there. Cally’s suitably cautious attempt at trade is about to spark a very nasty sounding civil war and those children seem likely to end up on the losing side. Why haven’t you brought them back yet?”_ _

__“Teleport block,” Vila said. “ About fifty yards across. Orac says it’s pulling all the settlement’s stored power reserves and won’t last more than twenty minutes or so.”_ _

__“It might not need to.” Tarrant was switching the clip on his gun. “Any firing registered?”_ _

__“Zen's picked up some hand blaster fire in the area. Stun? Isn’t that risky in a shooting war?”_ _

__“I may well need to shoot that baby’s mother. I’d rather have her still alive afterwards to give him back to, unless you’d like to try being a foster parent. Put me down as close as possible and let me know as soon as the block is up.”_ _

__“But what about the baby? I can’t look after a baby!”_ _

__“Of course you can. His milk’s in that bag. Improvise, Vila! But don’t leave the teleport, whatever you do. Put me down now.”_ _

__

__There was a blessedly welcome silence as Tarrant materialised. No crying baby, no sounds of gunfire, just a quiet street._ _

__Instinct and training had sent him into the nearest cover anyway, even before he registered the injured man dragging himself slowly along the road. Now Tarrant could count at least half a dozen people crouching behind doors and a vehicle in the road but no-one moved to help. Their attention seemed to be entirely on the ostentatiously pillared trading hall and the bronze door, slightly ajar, through which Tarrant could see the glint of what was probably a gun barrel._ _

__Something of a stand-off then. He was willing to bet that Cally and Dayna were inside, but with who else, and were they friends or foes? And which was Geraint’s side- out here or in there?_ _

__Presumably whoever had set up the teleport block had some idea of how long it would last and would be prepared to move before it failed. Waiting for it to run out might not be the best option. Also, he reminded himself, these people had actually used the teleport and knew how it was operated. Chances were Dayna and Cally had been relieved of their bracelets already._ _

__By the time he’d made a slow and careful circuit of the building he’d established that there were at least two dozen besiegers and at the minimum a defender at each of the six doors and windows. He hadn’t seen Geraint at all. Brief exchange of fire had been heard a couple of times but he saw no more casualties. And either the guys out here were really stupid or they knew for certain that all their enemies were inside because there wasn’t a single person keeping an eye on the road or the surroundings._ _

__Damn. He hated guns in the hands of civilians. No guessing how incompetent or trigger happy they might be. Still, he could see no alternative. Not only his crewmates but the rhubarb leaves that would save Avon’s life were almost certainly on the other side of that door, and he couldn’t take down two dozen armed people with a stun gun; first noise he made and none of them would be looking the wrong way any more._ _

__Trying not to think about how dangerous this was and how easily he could be killed in the next few seconds, he holstered his gun, raised his hands in the air and stepped out into the road._ _

__“Hey there,” he called, aiming for firm but friendly. “I’d like to speak to someone...”(he caught himself just before saying ‘in charge’) “...who knows what’s going on.”_ _

__The prickle across his nerves would have been enough to tell him that rather a lot of guns were now pointed at him, but nobody fired. Yet. Tarrant waited a couple of seconds for a reply, then clasped his hands behind his head and started walking slowly down the street towards the trading house. Still alive. Good._ _

__As he reached the vehicle, the man crouching behind it said “Stop there.”_ _

__Tarrant stopped._ _

__“Come down here.”_ _

__Tarrant looked at the face, not the gun. “I think I’ll stay out here where everyone can see me. I wouldn’t want to give anyone the impression that I’m anybody’s reinforcements.”_ _

__“You’re from Liberator.” the man said._ _

__It wasn’t a question, but Tarrant nodded. “We’ve got two crew gone missing. I’m here to find them. My ship’s got no interest in taking sides in a local dispute, not if we can get our people back without any more trouble.”_ _

__“Your ship _is_ the trouble,” the man said. “You wouldn’t be Blake himself now, would you?”_ _

__“Del Tarrant. Blake’s dead, best I know. Didn’t you meet him on Liberator?”_ _

__The man turned and spat on the ground, an action oddly at variance with his smooth accent. “Locked in the hold, gassed and dumped. Not much scope there for invitations to dinner at the Captain’s table.”_ _

__"Well, Blake's gone and Liberator is under new management. Any idea where my friends might be?"_ _

__The man jerked his head at the hall. "In there, dead or alive."_ _

__"And why might they be dead?"_ _

__"Geraint's gone power crazy. She's trying to close down all free trade with your ship."_ _

__"So you're out here to defend that trade ?"_ _

__"Of course." he said with belligerence. "No-one tells me what I can do."_ _

__"That makes it easy," Tarrant said. "Trade me the leaves we need and Uva's power grab fails, I get my people back and there's no reason for anyone else to get shot."_ _

__The man didn't look as happy as Tarrant had hoped. There was a pause before he said, "It's all in that hall."_ _

__All of it? "I was told sixteen people had supplies. Do none of them keep them elsewhere?"_ _

__"Sixteen people hold options, not individual supplies. It's a complex market."_ _

__"It sounds to me more like a scam," Tarrant said. "How many leaves actually exist?"_ _

__"That's commercially confidential information."

A worrying though hit Tarrant. "The leaves do actually contain this exigine?" Had they all being wasting what little time Avon had left? 

__The man sighed. "A few of the plants have base leaves large enough to contain measurable amounts. Why do you think we are still on this damn filthy planet? If we were making the millions everyone thinks we are then we'd have relocated by now. But the leaves in there are the real deal. Pity you can't get hold of them."_ _

__"Why the pretence?" Tarrant demanded. "Doesn't scarcity put the price up?"_ _

__"It's not a pretence. It's a sophisticated internal market that provides improved options for both buyers and sellers. "_ _

__Tarrant held himself back from replying to that. Arguing business ethics was best not done with people who had guns trained on you. "Thanks for the information. I'm going to collect my friends now._ _

__"She'll likely put a bullet in you before you get near them," the man warned._ _

__"I don't think anyone's going to be stupid enough to do that.' Tarrant said with a great deal more confidence than he actually felt. "There's a fully armed ship still in orbit up there."_ _

__The man glanced up reflexively, then lifted the gun a little, away from Tarrant's chest. "Go on then. You might like to know that if the traitors in there get killed, no one out here will be looking for revenge on your ship for them. We don't hold you responsible for what Roj Blake did."_ _

__Tarrant was tempted to linger and ask more questions about precisely what that had been but he was on a mission here and the longer he stood here openly talking to this guy the harder it would be to convince the other side that he wasn't a hostile._ _

__He drew himself up again, hands still clasped behind his neck, and started walking again towards the bronze door._ _


	4. Consequences

This day just kept getting less and less promising, Tarrant thought. Having survived the people with guns who might have wanted to kill him, he was now walking towards the ones who had already tried it once. He could feel the weight of his own gun at his hip, less comforting than usual since he didn't dare lower his hands yet. 

As he approached the door it opened a little further, enough for him to squeeze through, not enough for him to yet see anything inside. 

He stopped about a foot from the doorway. "If you're in there, Uva, I have a question." 

"Your people are unharmed. Come inside." Uva's voice was calm. 

'I'm delighted to hear it but that wasn't my question."

A shape appeared behind the doorway, far enough back that no-one else outside could see her, "I shot at you because Avon came down to the surface of Ida to rescue us."

"How do you figure out that one? I have to say that you do seem to be the most ungrateful rescuees ever." 

There was something resembling a laugh at that. "Kerr Avon demonstrated on Ida that he's no coward. He wouldn't be hiding on your ship, sending you to lie for him. Since I know he's back on Liberator that means he must be incapacitated and that's why you came for the anti toxin. And that's why I had to stop you."

Tarrant thought that sending other people to lie for him sounded exactly like the sort of thing Avon would do but he wasn't going to talk down the man to the only person who might be able to save him. "You're right. He's very ill. But that wasn't my question either."

"Ask it then."

"Why does your niece think we abduct children?"

She stepped forward just far enough that he could now see the gun levelled at his chest. "Where is she? Where's my son?"

"In a place a lot safer than the one where you left them." It was so tempting to tell Uva that he'd return the children only when he had the women and the rhubarb leaves safe on Liberator. And if it saved three lives, would it be so unethical a thing to do? 

Yes it would This bloody planet was getting to him. He hadn't taken innocent kids up to the ship to be hostages "I'll bring them back as soon as it's safe. We don't kidnap children, Uva. Why the hell would your people say these things about us?" 

He glared at her. "For that matter, why would you want to kill the man who saved you? Whatever happened on Liberator, however you ended up dumped in the rain, was it really so much worse than having your entire colony die in that asteroid strike on Ida because there weren't two strangers brave enough to help you? "

That had got a little louder than he'd intended, given that he was at the wrong end of her gun, but he was getting thoroughly tired of these people, their incomprehensible hostility, their unreasonable expectations and his ongoing failure to achieve the one simple thing that would save Avon's life while there was still time. 

“It’s not a matter of gratitude,” she said. “We entered into a contract with Liberator to relocate the colony. Blake took that as carte blanche to interfere aggressively in our internal affairs and then he unilaterally broke the contract. We know full well that no-one else can ever be expected to defend our autonomy. We must do it ourselves.”

“Isn’t defending their freedom what the guys out there claim to be doing?” Tarrant asked. “They say you’re on a power grab.”

“Them? They’ve got no real commitment to personal freedom,” Uva said dismissively. “They just want to get rich.”

“Whether that’s true or not, there are a lot more of them than of you. Do you have a plan that doesn’t involve dying heroically?”

"I want to speak to Kerr Avon," she said instead of answering his question.

"You can't. He's unconscious. Dying, in fact, rather unheroically.” This seemed to be an appropriate enough time, Tarrant thought. “He told me to tell you that he was sorry.”

“He’s sorry?” 

Tarrant wasn’t sure if the pitch of her voice indicated surprise or horror. “Avon wouldn’t have said so if he didn’t mean it. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever heard him apologise to anyone before.”

There was a long pause. Then "Take this." She stepped a little further forward to hold out an envelope that had been in her left hand all along, her gun still trained on him. 

"What is it?"

"One leaf."

He stepped forward quickly to take it before she changed her mind. "That isn't enough."

"No. But it will slow the poison and support his system enough for him to regain consciousness. The teleport field will be switched off. Bring him down here. I need to talk to him."

"Then let Dayna and Cally go," Tarrant said sharply. And into the silence. “You can’t afford any more enemies, Uva. You certainly can’t afford to add one as powerful as Liberator to the ones you’ve already got out there.”

“You’re already my enemy, surely? I tried to kill you. I find it hard to believe that you could truly be that forgiving, Tarrant.”

“Oh, I’m not particularly forgiving,” he said cheerfully. “But I like Ceres. She’s a brave girl and deserves better than to be told that she’s never going home again. And Baer needs his mother.”

Uva frowned at him. “Roj Blake thought that we were so immoral that our children should be taken from us.”

So there really was an genuine basis to that nasty little rumour. Tarrant was mildly appalled that the adults had let the children find out about it, but he supposed children did pick things up. He shrugged. “I suppose that might concern Blake, from what I’ve heard of him. Me, I want three more rhubarb leaves for Avon, my crewmates returned unharmed, and somewhere safe to put the children down Your ethics are really not my concern. Your co-operation is. If you want a chance to talk to Avon, let my people go. You have the entire supply of anti-toxin here as hostage against our aggression.”

“And now you have our children as hostage against ours, for all that you’re politely pretending otherwise, Del Tarrant.” She turned round. “Return their bracelets and turn off the blocking field.” 

“Thank you.” Tarrant said. “When Avon is well enough to move I’ll contact you again.” 

He stepped into the entrance, out of range of the besiegers’ guns, and dropped his arms with a sigh of relief, speaking into his bracelet. “Vila, the field should be down. Three to teleport.” 

 

Three hours, Zen predicted, until Avon was sufficiently (if temporarily) well enough to talk and if necessary move. Cally and Vila were getting a bit of sleep while they could. Ceres had already been fast asleep on the couch in the teleport room when Tarrant returned to the ship, and hadn’t woken as they moved her to a spare bed. 

Baer however, despite having been fed and changed, seemed to be tireless in his protests about his situation. He was moreorless satisfied when someone was walking up and down with him, and the others all seemed to think that he was Tarrant’s responsibility for some reason, so it was Tarrant pacing around the flight deck as Dayna argued with him.

“She’ll kill him. She’s a psychopath, Tarrant. She shot the man who was going to trade with us in the head, no warning, nothing, and he was one of her own people. She hates us and she hates Avon most of all. He wouldn’t last a moment down there!”

“It’s the only chance he’s got,” Tarrant insisted. 

“We could help the besiegers overrun the building.” 

“The besiegers are the ones who have been bullying your farmers for the rhubarb. Do you really want to put them back in charge?” 

Dayna scowled at that. “At least they didn’t hold me at gunpoint and threaten to kill me. I loathe all these bloody Idans without exception but we need to save Avon and at least the ones outside don’t have any particular reason to want to kill him.”

“I’m not sure we can assume that. Whatever Blake and Avon did, they did to all of them. These guys might say that they want the money more than they want revenge but I wouldn’t recommend that Avon turn his back on them, not once.” Baer made a large hiccup and Tarrant patted him on the back. 

Dayna snorted. “Avon wouldn’t even need to leave the med unit. We go down now, we help the DSCP blast through those doors, we take the leaves and we get the hell out of here.” 

“And the children?”

“They’re bound to have more relatives down there, even if your Geraint insists on getting herself killed. We can always leave them with the farmers until things settle in town.” 

Tarrant looked down at the small head, the long black eyelashes fluttering closed now over coppered skin. “No. There’s no way to take that building without major casualties among the defenders. Believe me, I do have some experience in these matters.” 

She glared at him. “So that woman gets protected and Avon can go to hell?”

“Avon can go down to Dera Three or not, as he decides. If he doesn’t want to go, we’ll do what it takes to get the rhubarb, one way or another. But for now we wait for him.”

Dayna wasn’t happy with that decision or with him, not at all, but she couldn’t get down to the planet on her own and if she made any move towards using the weapons controlled from her console, Tarrant could take the ship straight out of orbit. Muttering something about checking on Avon she stalked out. 

 

Tarrant jerked awake, twisting his neck to ease the cramp.. He’d managed to fall asleep at his console and no-one had relieved him for...he glanced at the screen ...hours! Baer was still asleep sprawled on his back in the clear plastic box that Tarrant had found in a cupboard and lined with a blanket. It looked to Tarrant as if it might be a spare casing for Orac but if so neither the computer nor Avon was here to protest.

“Zen, have there been any weapons discharges in the town?”

_Negative._ It was night down there now. That was something. 

“Is Avon awake yet?”

_Affirmative._

“He is?” That must explain where the rest of the crew was. Tarrant took another glance at the baby, told Zen to notify him immediately if Baer woke and set off at a run towards the med room.

He slowed to enter. Avon was propped up with pillows, all three of the others around him.

“Avon! How are you feeling?”

“Terrible.” Avon nodded at the med unit’s readout. “And still dying, I gather which is something of a disappointment.” His voice was at least a little stronger than the last time that they’d spoken.

“There’s still a bit of a situation on planet, “ Tarrant admitted. 

“We’ve told him,” Cally said. 

“So Dayna will have told you all the reasons that you shouldn’t go?”

“She does seem to have a point, “ Avon said. “And...” His eyes had moved past Tarrant. “And who might you be?”

“I was looking for Baer, “ a small voice said.

“It’s all right, Ceres.” Tarrant waved a hand. “These are my other friends. Cally, Dayna and Avon.”

The child was staring at Avon. “Are you going to die?”

“I trust not, “ Avon said. He raised an eyebrow in query at Tarrant. 

“Vila,” Tarrant said, picking on the person he though most likely to be happy to leave the conversation. “Can you take Ceres to the flight deck to check on her cousin? Then she would probably like something to eat, I would think.”

He turned back to Avon as they left. “Ceres is Geraint’s niece. Baer is her baby son.” 

“You thought you’d complicate the situation further by kidnapping Uva’s family?” 

“They’re refugees from the conflict. I found them barricaded in her house.”

“And you brought them here?” Avon said in what sounded like genuine astonishment? “What were you thinking? That no-one else on the entire planet could look after two stray children better than you could?”

“They were sort of bequeathed to us, “ Tarrant explained. “To you, actually.” He asked Zen to play the audio message and Avon listened to it, his frown deepening.

“She’s insane,” Dayna said into the silence that followed. “Or just really stupid, to think that she could threaten you and beg for your help in the same breath.”

“She’s neither.” Avon said. “She’s morally inflexible. And her ideology’s got her into a mess that she can’t get out of. She can’t win her war alone so we’re going to have to help her.”

“Do you really think that will get you the anti toxin?” Cally shook her head. “You said that she’s inflexible and we’ve already discovered that gratitude doesn’t come high up in her ethical hierarchy.”

“I’m as confident as I need to be that it will, “ Avon said. “We’ve got four hours of darkness before there’s enough light for the Idans to start shooting at each other again. That gives us barely enough time.”

 

Whatever Liberator’s unknown designers had intended her for, landing on planets was definitely not on the list. It didn’t help Tarrant to know that she’d already been put down in the area that he was aiming for previously, and not even by her semi-legendary pilot but by Roj Blake, who was famous for many things, piloting not being among them. The man must have relied on automatics and a great deal of luck but that wouldn’t salve Tarrant’s pride if he screwed up now. 

“Final take hold!” he called over the open comm. “And don’t let go until the crew tell you to!” Most of the people now on board had never travelled in anything bigger or faster than a grav truck. With the exception of Avon, even the crew probably had no real idea why big spaceships didn’t enter atmospheres, let alone deliberately collide with planetary surfaces. That Blake and Avon had taken the risk two years ago was the most compelling evidence as far as Tarrant was concerned that events on the ship must have reached crisis proportions. 

Tarrant wouldn’t be doing it now if there had been time for an alternative. But the anti toxin was wearing off, the whites of Avon’s eyes were noticeably yellowing with jaundice as his liver failed and with the onset of dawn sporadic shooting had started again in the town below them. It was now or never. He hooked the makeshift safety belt around his chest, flicked the comm off as an unnecessary distraction and treated the otherwise empty flight deck to a couple of choicely obscene words. He had insisted that he didn’t need any help and there were safer places on the ship for the others to ride out the bumps. Then he turned the auxiliary shields on and brought the ship down in an extremely shallow dive into the the edge of the atmosphere. 

It was a bit bumpy and then it was a lot bumpy. Tarrant could hear the distant roar of Baer’s fury but no-one else in hearing distance was screaming, which was something. He’d gone for the shallowest descent that the shields could handle, circling the world below him a full four times in what felt like a long, long chaotic burn through the air but his console assured him was going to take precisely the two minutes twenty eight seconds of his calculation. Blake must have had the whole planet from which to choose a landing spot but if Tarrant couldn’t land close to the town he might as well have stayed in orbit. There was one place large and flat enough but if he overshot by as little as a mile or so Liberator could demolish half the settlement and doubtless the only rhubarb leaves in existence with it. 

There was the ground now, close enough for him to see the occasional farmsteads flashing by underneath him as the ship hurtled towards its destination. It seemed impossible as the ground got nearer that she could slow in time, but the forward engines acted as brakes and slow she did with a shaking that was enough to dislodge Vila’s console from its setting in the floor and send it crashing into the wall. 

Tarrant didn’t have more than a second to hope that Ceres wasn’t too terrified as he hung onto the controls. Slower, slower, and Zen hadn’t been able to tell him precisely what Liberator’s stall speed in atmosphere would be so he’d had to make his best estimate, which given that she didn’t have anything even resembling a glide profile hadn’t been at all easy but she hadn’t stalled yet which was good because they were still more than a hundred feet off the ground. He pointed her nose the tiniest fraction further down because he really wanted to lose some more of that that height before she did stall, and she started shaking again, hard enough that he was thrown against the limits of the harness. Then stall she finally did, close enough to the ground that they merely thumped into it from a height of twenty foot or so and the loose console slammed against another, knocking it over as well. 

Then everything stopped. Close to spot on target, his console insisted, and yes, he could see the grey-brown of the town buildings topped by the graceful tower of the trading hall, no more than a mile away at most.

“Seems that we’re both lucky bastards,” Tarrant said to Blake’s shade, and turned the comms on. “We’re down. Emergency reports first please.”

To his surprise there were no serious emergencies. They’d all come through battered and bruised but mostly unbroken. The automatic repair systems were already running; a couple of hours until they could safely get off the ground, a couple of days until everything was good as new. 

 

“None of us are going.” Propped up in the chair with tubes again going between him and the med unit, Avon’s voice was still strong enough to cut through the argument. “This isn’t our fight now. We keep out of it.”

“I don’t think anyone’s going to accept our neutrality,” Cally said. “Not after we brought this lot here.” 

Below them the Derans were disembarking in groups of five and six. It would take a while for all three hundred and forty six of them to reach the ground. 

“The Idans have more advanced weaponry, “ Dayna said. 

“And there are at least ten times as many Derans, They don’t need our help.” Avon said.

Tarrant looked down at the milling groups of armed people below. Somehow in the last couple of hours they’d transformed from downtrodden farmers to a fairly aggressive looking force. “Are you sure that they know that Geraint and the people in the hall are supposed to be on their side? Because when I was trying to tell some of them I didn’t get the impression that they were paying any attention.”

Avon shrugged. “They’ve been told everything that we know. What they do with it is up to them. It’s their planet.”

“Their planet?” Tarrant stared at him. “This isn’t about saving Uva or getting the anti-toxin, is it? It’s about putting right your mistake in dumping the Idans here. For God’s sake, Avon, this really is no time to develop a conscience about past misdeeds! If you don’t get those leaves you’ll die.”

Yellow eyes glared at him out of a sallow face. "Don’t take me for a fool.”

“Then don’t keep us ignorant!.” He glanced round for support from the others. “We’ve been operating on too little information all along. Now we’re risking being complicit in the slaughter of an entire refugee population, including the only family of the children we have on board - we need more than 'Blake made a mistake'. What happened on Liberator?"

“I don’t appreciate questions,” Avon said. “What are you going to do if I refuse?”

“Make my own plans to get those leaves, since I can’t rely on yours. And they won’t involve sitting here while that lot take the fight into town, I can assure you!”

Avon closed his eyes for a moment. He really did look terrible. “Very well, if it’s the only way to stop you being an idiot. We were transporting the Idans in a locked hold, for our security with Geraint the only one on the main ship. Two groups decided that they wanted to settle on different planets and there was a dispute within the hold over the distribution of the colony's remaining assets. Shooting started and three people were killed. It looked as if it could escalate badly and there were children down there. Blake decided... we decided... that we needed to stop the fighting. We set up a suppression field and pumped sleeping gas into the hold, then left the lot of them unconscious with all their possessions here."

There was a bemused silence. "But what was the mistake?" Cally finally asked. “What else could you have done?”

“With hindsight, any number of things,” Avon said. “We could have negotiated a cease fire, arranged for talks to take place. We could have supplemented the assets of the smaller group so that the colony could split without violence. We could have told Geraint that we had the power and intended to enforce a no violence policy while they were travelling on our ship, given her an ultimatum that she could take to the others. At the very least we could have woken them up again and let them arrive at their new home with a modicum of dignity.”

“So why didn’t you?” Tarrant asked.

“It doesn’t matter.” 

“Come on, Avon. Half a story is worth nothing.”

“Because Blake had already decided by then that the Idans were heartless greedy killers without a flicker of humanity or any sense of community.” Avon glanced across at Dayna. “They do seem to be rather good at giving that impression.” 

“And why did you agree with him?” It was harsh, to interrogate a sick man like this, but Tarrant needed to understand what was going on out there, not just for Avon’s sake but the children who had somehow become his responsibility. None of this made sense yet and he was damn well going to keep on until it did and he’d worked out what he could do about it.

Avon sighed. “There were tensions on board, serious ones. Everything Uva said appalled Blake, every word he uttered made her despise him more. Blake and I quarrelled about it; he didn’t like my fraternisation with the enemy.”

Fraternisation, huh? Tarrant thought, But Avon was carrying on;

“Which is to say that by the time the shooting started Blake was already in an unprecedentedly bloody awful mood. His first instinct was to charge down there and give them a piece of his mind, which meant that my first objective had to be to find some way of closing down the situation really fast before he got himself killed. Unfortunately Uva was so outraged by my solution that I had to shoot her in self defence. After that the Idans were no longer in a position to argue their side and I thought that I might as well pick up a bit of my heavily depleted credit with Blake by getting the matter done as he wanted it and over with as fast as possible.”

He was talking to Cally now, the only one there who had known both men. “It was a long time ago, back when I still thought there was a chance that Blake might actually give me credit for anything.” 

“That’s not fair,” she told him. “Blake always relied on you. He knew your worth.” 

“Really? Well, he certainly showed no sign of it that time, but that’s beside the point. The point is that Blake thought that what we did was no worse than they deserved and right then I was disinclined to be the one to lecture him on ethics so we dumped a bunch of seriously aggrieved and paranoid libertarians on this planet and you’ve seem the consequences.

Tarrant found the idea of Blake being someone that Avon had wanted to impress quite fascinating, but he’d think about that later. First things first. “You’ve forgotten about the cabbages,” he said.

“Not for a moment, I assure you. What about them?”

“According to the lot down there the newcomers were perfectly reasonable neighbours before the tempting opportunity of getting stinking rich turned up. And I didn’t get much sense that you were precisely loved in the town, but most of them were more than willing to help save your life if we paid them for it. These people aren’t paranoid and aggrieved, they are greedy and unprincipled, and that can hardly be laid at your door.”

Tarrant turned to Cally. “The farmers are going to whip the Deran Supply Chain Partnership’s greedy unprincipled arses for them, after which they are going to need to negotiate a reasonably fair supply agreement. If you and Dayna go with them, strictly as non combatants, you can be honest brokers when the fighting stops.” 

She nodded without even glancing at Avon. “We can do that, yes. But what about Geraint?”

“Avon will deal with Uva” Tarrant said. “Because he’s wrong; she’s not out to kill him because Blake didn’t treat her colony with sufficient respect for their rights of political autonomy, though I’m sure that annoyed her. She’s out to kill Avon because he shot her, dumped her and all her possessions in two inches of thick mud, then flew away without even a goodbye.”

Avon gave him a withering look. “Do you ever had a notion that isn’t idiotically simplistic?”

“I’m a simple man,” Tarrant told him, “And in this case I’m right. Go down there, apologise properly, tell her what a lovely baby Baer is and ask her very nicely for the anti-toxin. Shall I tell her you’ll be teleporting in five minutes?” 

 

Liberator seemed quiet without Baer. Blessedly quiet, Tarrant thought. He’d spent too much time with younger siblings and cousins around when he was growing up to miss having a baby around. The ship was down to its usual crew of five, the children back home, the farmers making their own way overland back to their homes in temporarily confiscated DSCP trucks, carrying the radios that were intended to ensure that they wouldn’t find themselves isolated again. None of them seemed keen on travelling via Liberator again, even though they had been offered teleports rather than atmospheric landings. 

Liberator herself was back in space, none the worse for her dive into a a gravity well. And Avon was fully recovered, back on the flight deck and aggressively ignoring Tarrant. 

Avon’s pride aside, everything on Dera Three had worked out pretty well in the end. The Idans besieging the trading hall had apparently been sufficiently intimidated by Liberator’s descent (she had created some truly spectacular sonic booms and there was broken glass all over the town) that when several hundred annoyed farmers turned up they had cut and run and the Derans had been able to take control of every part of the town except the hall, still zealously guarded by Uva’s relatives, without bloodshed. Cally and Dayna had been able to provide some guarantee of protection to the shaken Idans and negotiations between the two communities. (or three if you count Geraint’s non-DSCP grouping) had been well on the way when Liberator left.

Avon had come back from his visit to the no longer besieged Uva with the other three rhubarb leaves and the contents of the treasury room were, according to Dayna who had checked, lighter by at least fifty thousand credits. Tarrant was willing to bet that the precise number would be sixty four thousand, five hundred and nine. Uva was clearly a woman who kept to her agreements except under extreme provocation, which Avon’s presence on Liberator had undoubtedly been. When Tarrant had teleported to her house with the children, Uva had thanked him with what seemed to be real sincerity for taking care of them and wished him and Liberator good luck for the future but neither of them had mentioned Avon. 

Back on the ship and with the Deran system far behind them, Tarrant had decided that shift patterns could not be tweaked forever and they had eventually ended up on the flight deck together and alone. Tarrant had managed not to say “I told you so” to Avon once so far, but it seemed from the glowers that he might as well have done because apparently Avon could read his mind that far perfectly well. So Tarrant had decided that they really needed to talk.

“Gathering the farmers- that was your idea. Without that the mess would never have got sorted.”

Avon didn’t look up from his console. “You are never going to have the gravitas to pull off an attempt at being patronising.” 

“I’m serious. All I did was provide a bit of external perspective.” 

“All you did,” Avon said coldly, “was confuse matters. Geraint thought that you were a fool.”

Ouch. “Did she say that?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Then you’re projecting,” Tarrant said confidently. “And I know what you think of me already.” 

“That saves me the trouble of telling you, at least.”

“I was right though? About why Uva was cross?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand the concept of a principled ideological position.” Avon said dismissively. “I doubt that you’ve ever held a thought out moral stance on anything.” 

“And now you think that’s a fault?” Tarrant demanded. “Come on, Avon. You’ve never been an idealist, and I’m willing to bet that the position that got you in so much trouble with Blake was more physical than political.”

Because he thought he had maybe gone a little too far, he added “Not that that’s any of my business, of course. But I have to admire your taste, though obviously hers leaves a bit to be desired.”

There was a silence, while Avon input a series of figures from his hand set to his console. Finally he said, in a voice a little lighter than it had been, “Even a fool can’t be wrong all the time, I suppose. This will take a while to run. I’m going to get a coffee, if you want one.” 

Tarrant was tempted to ask Avon what precisely he hadn’t been wrong on, but on consideration he decided to just assume the conversation was over for now

He _had_ been right about Uva, which meant that he considered himself to have been responsible for saving Avon’s life, which was a good position to be in given that Avon must know it too. Tarrant hadn’t been keeping score precisely but it was always useful to have ammunition just in case Avon might start to think that maybe he was dispensable. 

The offer of coffee was definitely an olive branch, which he accepted with alacrity, because it was going to be a less boring shift if they were speaking to each other and he could do with the caffeine. He sat and sipped it while Avon muttered about his numbers, and he thought with some satisfaction about the fact that they’d done something useful between them about Dera Three, because maybe they weren’t idealists like Blake but generally even Avon turned out to be inclined to put things a little righter than he’d found them when possible, which didn’t take an ideology but just a bit of courage and good will. 

And Tarrant had been right about Avon too, who it turns out was not entirely cold blooded after all. Tarrant wasn’t sure what he was going to do with that piece of information yet but he thought that if he couldn’t use it to liven up Liberator a bit then he was losing his touch. And finally no-one should forget that he’d landed Liberator in a manner which admittedly no-one else had been polite enough to openly admire but he knew was spectacularly brilliant. So for the moment Tarrant was drinking coffee in a mood that contained a fair amount of contentment at the state of things, until the next crisis came along, anyway.


End file.
